80S FASHION LEG WARMERS

The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant

Rainer Werner Fassbinder adapted his own play for this modern twist on The Women, the great all-female Hollywood classic of sex and social conventions in high society. Margit Carstensen is successful dress designer Petra, Irm Hermann her silent, obedient secretary/servant/Girl Friday Marlene (whom she alternately abuses and ignores), and Hanna Schygulla the callow, shallow young Karin, a seemingly naive blond beauty Petra treats as part protegee, part pet, until the calculating kitten turns on Petra. Michael Ballhaus's prowling camera finds Marlene silently hovering on the borders of Petra's dramas, looking on through doors and windows like an adoring lover from afar. Bouncing between catty melodrama and naked emotional need, it's a quintessentially Fassbinder portrait of doomed love, jealousy, and social taboos. The DVD features commentary by Fassbinder scholar Jane Shattuc, the early 1966 Fassbinder short films The City Tramp and The Little Chaos, the bonus documentary Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and filmographies. --Sean Axmaker

NEW YORK—Silk painted with lotuses, long trailing sashes, and royal brocade were some of the fine details on display at the first Global Han Couture Design Competition held at Manhattan's Prince George Ballroom on Sunday, Oct. 18.

The competition was part of a series of competitions held by New Tang Dynasty Television this year, including piano, violin, traditional Chinese dance, martial arts, and voice.

More even-paced than your average fashion show, several hours of eye-popping designs from over 50 contestants paraded down the catwalk. The designs ranged from familiar styles seen in traditional Chinese paintings—simple lines, broad panels and airy fabrics—to ones resembling those worn by characters in martial arts comic books.

The competition's guidelines were to “borrow the patterns in clothing of the Tang, Song, and Ming dynasties...to create contemporary garments,” leaving the door wide open for a variety of styles and inspirations. But because the Western-Eastern combinations tended not to work, judges reverted to authenticity as their main judging criteria.

“Our selection process is designed this way because we want to use this to help guide the development of Han fashion down the line,” said judge Amy Li, who is an award-winning fashion designer trained in China. “We will be holding this competition in the future, we would like to see, in Chinese culture we have 5,000 years of fashion so we feel it's already very rich and there's a lot to draw upon already and we wanted to see a little bit more of that. There were some other pieces that were not as Asian and we felt that, having incorporated the western elements, even though it was nice in some cases, that it somehow doesn't match, so it detracted from the overall effect.”

Each contestant was allowed to submit several pieces in two categories: casual wear and formal wear. In addition to a trophy and certificates of awards, $10,000 cash prizes were rewarded to gold winners, $5,000 to silver winners, and $2,000 USD to bronze winners.

Liqing Chen from Taiwan, whose pieces featured scooping sleeves and shapes that virtually leaped out from a painting, won silver in the casual division.

“Ancient Chinese fashion was very elegant, simple yet bold,” Chen said. “Mine was not very fancy but you don’t need a lot with Han couture to make it beautiful.”

Amy Li commented on the pieces that won gold in the formal wear division. Its theme was “Moments.” “The evening wear gold winner, the theme was ‘moment’ and we felt that it captured a moment in time of traditional Chinese couture,” Li said. “It was again very beautiful and at the same time very authentic.”

Some members of the fashion industry were in the audience. Sandi Grant, a New York fashion show producer, found the show impressive.

“The different colors, I loved the colors, the sequins, the embroidery, done stitch by stitch, they’re geniuses,” she said.

Lavera Wright, a former model and fashion consultant, now trains young models and holds fashion shows for upcoming New York designers. “It’s different from regular fashion shows,” Wright said. “The models took the time to pause, they really wore those gowns – they didn’t just run across the stage. They were elegant and graceful. That’s the way I am and how I teach my girls.”
5,000 Years of Fashion

The Han clothing is designed based on an old saying, “being one with heaven and man.” The couture reflects on people’s respect and faith in gods at the time.

Clothes initially appeared in China around 2000 BCE, which ended the prehistoric state of people covering themselves with animal skins. Since then, people learned to observe their surroundings and incorporate those natural elements into their clothing. For instance, the sky was black; therefore their top clothing was black in color, as it should symbolize heaven. The earth was yellow, as the bottom clothing was dyed yellow in resemblance of the earth. A sash tied around the waist symbolized the balance man must strike while living between heaven and earth. The Chinese people expressed their faith in heaven and earth clearly in such manner through their intricate attire.

The ancient Chinese believed that gods would unveil the truth to them when they had a kind heart, where human beings could then attain wisdom and a prosperous life.

IN "The French Line," the new Jane Russell picture which hit the Criterion yesterday, the idea is that Miss Russell is a Texas oil heiress with so much wealth that any self-respecting gentleman wouldn't dream of marrying her. (This, in itself, is rediculous but for brevity's sake we'll let it slide.)
"It would be like marrying a corporation," one of her pious suitors says. And that is the cue to the whole picture. A corporation, indeed.
For it is the corporation aspect of Miss Russell that is persistently and monotonously emphasized to the concealment of any possible entertainment of a more imaginative sort in this film. Let a scene come in in which Miss Russell sits down aboard the liner Liberte to slop up some booze with Gilbert Roland as a great lover truly gone on her and immediately her noted corporation is permitted to get in the way of whatever pretensions to witty banter about a cure for seasickness the scene may have.
Or let Miss Russell pop out grandly at a fashion show in gay Paree to do what one would anticipate to be the modeling of a gown and she pops out instead in the sort of scanties that would go better at the Folies Bergere and does a "grind" to a song called "I'm Looking for Trouble" that is as decorative and uplifting as a burlesque turn.
There's no use pretending about this picture. It's a cheap, exhibitionistic thing in which even the elaboration of the feminine figure eventually becomes grotesque. It looks as though someone had the notion that a very low and rather tight bodice, continued through numerous costume changes, is worth more than anybody's script—which may be, indeed, if we are weighing it against this one, of Mary Loos and Richard Sale, who, to judge by the images in their writing, could be the kids of Anita and Chic.
In a fable that looks a faint stencil of "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes," touched up with smoking-room humor, "The French Line" uninterestingly tells of Miss Russell's trip to Europe in search of a broad-minded man—a man, that is, who will take her money along with her own sweet self. But the only man of any amusement turned up is the character that Arthur Hunnicutt plays—a lean shanked and bearded Texas-drawling yawr-doggone-tootin' type.
Mr. Roland, as the one she finally ties to, appears bored and casual, as he might be. And Mary McCarthy as a traveling companion is a poor substitute for Marilyn Monroe.
To say any more about the cheapness and obviousness of this R. K. O. film would be but to give it more attention. And that it most certainly does not deserve.

BOSLEY CROWTHER New York Times 15 May 1954

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